Is It Worth Using A Dslr If Your Phone Has A Camera With More Megapixels
Editors' note: This article originally published May 6, 2012, and was updated on February 13, 2013, and once again on May iv, 2013.
In a matter of months, the high-end smartphone camera spec rocketed from a respectable 8 megapixels to an altitudinous 13.
The Samsung Milky way S4 and LG Optimus Chiliad Pro are the freshest examples of this megapixel push button, just even final January's Pantech Discover (12.6 megapixels), last October'due south LG Optimus One thousand for Sprint (13 megapixels), and especially mid-2012's 41-megapixel Nokia 808 PureView piled on the megapixels.
Yet even though the technology exists, quality can be just equally uneven from telephone to phone as it was when an 8-megapixel shooter was the "best" that money could buy.
Shootout!: Samsung Galaxy S4 versus HTC One and iPhone 5
Championing that perception head-on is HTC, the same company that not too long ago boasted about the 16-megapixel camera in its Titan II. Now, in its HTC One flagship, the smartphone maker dials down the megapixel count to four megapixels, which HTC fancifully terms "Ultrapixels," arguing that the lager pixel size throws back the blinds to allow in much more calorie-free.
In this lies the reminder (something photography basics will tell y'all) that it'due south quite possible for an excellent 5-megapixel camera to produce photos you prefer over a shoddy 12-megapixel camera. The number of megapixels solitary is no guarantee of heightened photographic functioning.
Instead, the formula for fantastic photos comes downwardly to the entire camera module, which includes the size and material of the master camera lens, the lite sensor, the prototype processing hardware, and the software that ties it all together. So let's dive in.
Annotation: As always with this column, if you already consider yourself an expert, and so this commodity is probably not for you.
Key ingredient No. 1: The sensor
Most budding and professional photographers will tell yous that the most important ingredient in the optical arrangement is the sensor, because that's the office that captures the light. The sensor is substantially the "movie" fabric of a digital camera. No lite, no photo.
Light enters through the camera lens, then passes to the camera sensor, which receives the information and translates information technology into an electronic signal. From there, the image processor creates the prototype and fine-tunes it to correct for a typical set of photographic flaws, like noise.
The size of the image sensor is extremely of import. In general, the larger the sensor, the larger your pixels, and the larger the pixels, the more light you tin collect. The more light you can catch, the better your image tin can be.
The experts I spoke with for this story had colorful ways of describing the human relationship betwixt pixels and sensors, simply "buckets of water" or "wells" were a favorite (intentionally oversimplified) analogy.
Imagine yous have buckets (pixels) laid out on a blacktop (sensor). Y'all desire to collect the almost h2o (light) in those buckets equally possible. To extend the water-and-bucket analogy, the larger the sensor you have (blacktop), the larger the pixels (buckets) you lot can put onto it, and the more light (water) y'all can collect.
Larger sensors are the reason that 8 megapixels from a digital SLR camera (or five or 13) all-time those 8 megapixels from a smartphone photographic camera. Yous go roughly the same number of pixels, but the pixels on the dSLR get to exist larger, and therefore let in more lite. More light (by and large) equals less-noisy images and greater dynamic range.
The fallacy of megapixels
You can offset to see that cramming more pixels onto a sensor may not be the all-time way to increase pixel resolution. That hasn't stopped the cell telephone industry from doing just that.
Jon Erensen, a Gartner annotator who has covered camera sensors, remembers when we collectively made the leap from i-megapixel to 2-megapixel shooters.
"They would brand the pixel sizes smaller [to fit in more than pixels]," Erensen told me over the phone, "but keep the image sensor the same."
"What ended up happening is that the light would go into the well [the 'bucket'] and striking the photo-sensitive part of the prototype sensor, capturing the light. Then if you make the wells smaller, the lite has a harder time getting to the photo-sensitive function of the sensor. In the end, increased resolution wasn't worth very much. Racket increased," he said.
The relationship between the number of pixels and the physical size of the sensor is why some 8-megapixel cameras can outperform some 12-, thirteen-, or even 16-megapixel smartphone cameras.
There's more involved, too. A slim smartphone limits the sensor size for one, and moving up the megapixel ladder without increasing the sensor size can degrade the photograph quality past letting in less light than you could go with slightly fewer megapixels.
Then again, drastically shrunken pixel sizes aren't always the result when you increase your megapixels. HTC's Bjorn Kilburn, vice president of portfolio strategy, shared that the pixel size on the 16-megapixel Titan II measures one.12 microns, whereas each of the HTC One 10'south eight pixels measures a slightly larger 1.4 microns.
Every bit a result, the photo quality on both these HTC smartphones should be comparable at a pixel-by-pixel level.
Unfortunately, well-nigh smartphone makers don't share granular item near their camera components and sensor size, so until we test them, the quality is largely up in the air. Fifty-fifty if smartphone makers did release the details, I'thou non certain how scrutable those specs would exist to the bulk of smartphone shoppers.
For more than data on the interplay betwixt megapixels and sensors, check out the first-class description in CNET'southward digital camera buying guide.
What near Nokia'south 41-megapixel PureView?
The story backside the 808 PureView smartphone every bit Nokia tells it is really interesting. CNET Senior Editor Josh Goldman has written one of the best explanations of the Nokia 808 Pureview'south 41-megapixel camera that I've seen. I strongly advise you read it.
In the meantime, here'southward a curt summary of what's going on.
Juha (pronounce information technology YOO-hah) Alakarhu is caput of photographic camera technologies at Nokia, where he works within the Smart Devices team. Alakarhu explained to me that although Nokia has engineered the 808 to capture up to 41 megapixels, most users will view photos every bit the 5-megapixel default.
Commonly, when y'all utilise the digital zoom on your telephone, y'all're blowing up and cropping an prototype to run into each pixel up shut. Yous all know what that can wait like: grainy, blocky, and not ever as sharply focused or as colorful as y'all'd similar.
In the 808 PureView, Nokia uses a procedure called "oversampling," which -- for the 808'south v-megapixel default resolution -- condenses the data captured in vii pixels into 1 (they call information technology a "superpixel"). If y'all zoom in on an object, you lot're merely seeing office of the image that's already there, rather than scaling up. This method should translate to higher-resolution digital printouts and zoom-ins than you lot'd commonly run across.
Information technology's taken over v years to create the technology inside the 808 PureView, Alakarhu said. Not only does the 808 lean on the physical size of the sensor (specifically one/one.ii-inch), there are also custom algorithms on height of the sensor to adapt the prototype to reduce imperfections similar dissonance. It's this set of instructions that Nokia terms PureView, not the sensor size lonely.
As CNET'due south Goldman has pointed out, this is an unusually big sensor for a smartphone, and it'southward also larger than sensors establish on the vast bulk of signal-and-shoot cameras.
Primal ingredient No. ii: Paradigm processing
In addition to the size and quality of the lens and sensor, at that place'due south besides the paradigm processor. Most modern high-cease smartphone CPUs have defended graphics processors built into the chip, which, being hardware-accelerated and not just software-dependent, can chop-chop render images similar photos, videos, and games without overtaxing the main application processor.
HTC and Samsung accept been pushing continuous-burst manner difficult, averaging i shot in a tenth of a second or less, thank you to separate hardware-accelerated prototype processors that can capture shots like nobody'south business organization. However, since burst mode doesn't give you time to focus, expect to see some blur.
I promised that in that location was software bridging the hardware and the final image, and at that place is. Algorithms and other logic are what create the final image output on the telephone'south screen. This is where the near subjective chemical element of photography comes in: how your eye interprets the quality of color, the photo'southward sharpness, and so on.
The image processor is too what helps achieve zero shutter lag, when the photographic camera captures the photograph when you printing the capture button, non a trounce or two later.
Await, there's more
At that place'southward much more than to know about the competing technology that goes into sensors, just behind-illuminated sensors are starting to be used much more in smartphones.
This type of sensor is frequently synonymous with meliorate low-light functioning considering it increases photosensitivity. However, if you shoot in brilliant lite, information technology can also accident out your image. Hither are more details on how behind illumination works.
Low-light operation, by the way, is turning into a serious battleground for bragging rights. Nokia's Lumia 920 and Apple'southward iPhone 5 currently rule this shadowy realm, with HTC's One vastly outperforming the Samsung Milky way S4, which has no automated low-light adjustments to speak of (though in that location are several shooting modes).
Bankroll out of the low-light rabbit hole, it'southward of import to note that the photographic camera's sensor size and image processor may be the most crucial elements for creating quality smartphone photos, but other considerations come into play. Higher-quality components, for example, can help tease out better photos, merely they could as well cost more than, which could lead to a marginally pricier camera.
While the cost of a camera module is only i part of the total toll, Gartner analyst Erensen said that high-end parts could double the price of a bones camera fix, and thought that parts could toll $15 per phone. The smartphone makers I contacted for this article, like Samsung and Nokia, wouldn't share sourcing or pricing information.
Usability is king
Information technology's apace condign a well-worn aphorism that the best camera is the one y'all have on yous.
Despite the intense engineering focus that goes into the camera's physical elements, it's hard to overstress the importance of both convenience and the total customer experience. How easy it is to open the camera app from a locked position, how speedily photos capture, and how desirable the special furnishings and shooting modes are all add together up to either a camera you want to utilise or 1 you don't.
Increasingly, some phone makers, like HTC, LG, and Samsung, include extra logic in their large-ticket phones, like detecting smiles and selecting the best group photograph of a agglomeration. New modes have emerged among the top-tier Android handsets, including taking photos and videos from both front and rear cameras, likewise as grouping action shots into a unmarried frame.
Fancy filters and tricks are fun political party games, but for most phone owners, said Drew Blackard, Samsung's senior manager of product planning, being able to quickly and easily share photos on the fly is far more important than pixel count. Just look at Twitter's and Instagram's (now Facebook-owned) runaway success in sharing simple, pocket-size photos.
Gartner's Erensen agrees. "What do you actually gain from going higher than y'all need, in a practical sense?" he asked, adding that near people upload smartphone photos to online albums, or e-mail them to family unit and friends, formats that require many fewer than eight megapixels, or fifty-fifty five.
A trip to Indonesia illustrates what Nokia'south Alakarhu and the others mean by the whole feel taking precedence over the specs. While trekking with 22 pounds of gear on his back -- including a high-quality dSLR -- Alakarhu repeatedly reached for the Nokia 808 PureView he kept in his pocket.
Although he considers himself an amateur photographer who will put in the time to frame a smashing shot, Alakarhu said he found himself using the PureView more considering of its like shooting fish in a barrel availability and quick offset fourth dimension when he didn't want to take the time to ready a more involved shot on his digital camera.
I have my share of similar stories, and I suspect that you do, too.
We definitely shouldn't bit pixel count when weighing smartphone photographic camera specs against others, simply when it comes to all the hardware and software that create a cracking photograph, the megapixel count alone just isn't enough. Information technology's time we shift the focus somewhere else -- like perhaps to that undersung sensor.
Cheers to CNET Senior Editor Josh Goldman, who contributed to this story.
To encounter which phones have the latest, all-time camera technology, cheque out our current list of the all-time camera phones.
Smartphones Unlocked is a monthly column that dives deep into the inner workings of your trusty smartphone.
Source: https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/camera-megapixels-why-more-isnt-always-better-smartphones-unlocked/
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